Fuck. Me. Depending on your personal tastes, that’s at least 7 potential GOTY contenders coming out in the next 2 months. I know that I’m never going to play Dark Souls, and I kinda don’t really give a shit about Modern Warfare 3, and my enjoyment of Battlefield 3 will be directly proportional to the number of close friends on my friends list who are also playing it with me, but still. Fucking hell.

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This post is long overdue; since my last post I’ve finished Resistance 3 and Ico, played an hour or so of Shadow of the Colossus, and spent about 10 hours with Rage. Plus a whole bunch of iPhone stuff.

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It’s been exactly 1 week since I finished the campaign and I’m already starting to forget what Resistance 3 was like. Part of that is because, well, I’ve been super-busy and I’ve been playing a lot of stuff, and there’s only so much that the ol’ brain can hold at one time – but I suppose it’s also because the main thing that went through my mind throughout the entirety of R3’s campaign was that it was basically Half-Life 2 without the gravity gun. Not just because there’s one level which is straight-up Ravenholm, by the way. And I suppose, in a strange sort of way, it’s a sort of compliment – if you’re going to steal, steal from the best, and there really aren’t that many HL2 clones out there. And to its credit, while R3 doesn’t have a gravity gun, it does feature one of the best weapon arsenals I’ve ever played with. Every weapon is unique and powerful and levels up with repeated use, which is a fantastic incentive to not just stick with one thing (I’m looking at you, Gears 3 Lancer).

Resistance 3 also looks terrific; I’d have to see R3 and Killzone 3 side-by-side to do a proper face-off, but my gut says that R3 has a staggeringly good lighting engine, whereas Killzone 3 felt a bit crisper – I think I’d said at the time that K3 looked like a playable Final Fantasy cutscene. You know, now that I’m looking at that K3 post, I can definitely say that R3’s campaign was infinitely less frustrating than K3’s was. R3’s campaign is well-paced, well-designed, never overtly frustrating or unfair. I suppose there were a few times where I felt like I never had enough ammo, but considering that I seem to feel that way in a lot of games these days (especially Gears 3 and Rage), maybe that’s more reflective of me being a wildly inaccurate shooter in general.

Certainly worth a rental, although if the release calendar above is any indication, I suspect everyone’s going to have their hands full over the next few months.

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Ico probably deserves a post of its own. If I had the time, I’d give it. As it stands, though, it’s just gonna get sandwiched here in this mega-post and I’ll have to come back to it when I finish Shadow of the Colossus.

I finished it in a little over 5 hours – which I think is an appropriate length. It’s a little strange for me to have been looking forward to playing it for 10 years and then end up finishing it in 2 sittings, but, well, I didn’t own a PS2, so what are you gonna do.

It’s an astonishing experience. That’s a strong word for a game that feels more like a poem or a dream, but that’s really the only word that seems to apply. The gameplay holds up – there’s nothing about this game that feels dated or outmoded except maybe the stationary camera (which, to its credit, never gets in the way) and the combat (only because it eventually can feel like an annoyance, like in the first Prince of Persia game, although I have more to say about that later). It is so delicately atmospheric and textured and just warm and it inspires any number of feelings that most games never even think to touch on. It’s been said for years that the way Ico runs with Yorda is the sort of thing that melts your heart – Ico is hard-charging, Yorda is taller but more delicate, and so you feel the push and pull in the controller’s feedback – but even the save mechanic is moving and evocative – the way Ico just collapses into the couch, and then Yorda sits next to him, hands almost touching.

The part that really gave me chills, though, was right towards the end. SPOILERS BELOW. It’s hard to talk about spoiler warnings for a 10-year-old game, but then again, this package was intended specifically for people like me who’d never played either Ico or Shadow, so if you’re like me, consider this your warning.

***HERE BE SPOILERS***

All throughout the game, Ico is protecting Yorda from these shadow creatures. Who they are and what they want with Yorda is a mystery, but then, everything in the game is a mystery; you go with it. Anyway, at the end of the game, Ico returns to re-rescue Yorda, and he finds himself in the very room where the game started – a room filled with these large hollow stones, stones which would appear to be similar to the one that Ico was imprisoned in at the beginning of the game (and then subsequently escaped from).

Anyway, so he gets back to the room, and then he fights a seemingly endless supply of shadow creatures. It took me a little while to notice that with each creature I killed, one of the stones would light up. And then I noticed that each of the creatures I was killing had horn-like features around their heads – very much like Ico himself. AND THEN I STARTED GETTING CHILLS ALL OVER MY BODY, because it occurred to me that these shadow creatures were probably the ghosts of the other horned exiles who’d been imprisoned in this castle, and THEN I realized that it isn’t that the creatures were trying to kill Yorda before – it’s that they were in love with her, too, and wanted to bring her back to her world.

***HERE END SPOILERS***

I could be wrong about this theory, of course. The game is intentionally vague about a great many things. But I love that it let me come up with that idea, even if it’s wrong, because it changed the entire context about what I’d been doing.

Anyway. I’ll have more to say about this when I get around to finishing Shadow.

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As for Rage. I’m about 10 hours in; I’m a few missions into the 2nd disc. I’m enjoying it. Firstly, the hyperbole surrounding the graphics cannot be overstated; it looks phenomenal. It looks next-gen, frankly. Yeah, the textures get a little blurry if you stand up close, but when the game’s in motion and you’re running around (or driving around, as the case may be), it looks stunning. It feels like a more-linear Borderlands, and not just because of the similarities in setting. The shooting is great, although as noted above I’m apparently a terrible shot, and I find myself running out of ammunition even if I’m well-stocked going into a mission.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the game, for me, is how downright pleasant and happy a lot of the game’s NPCs seem to be. Granted, I just got to the 2nd city, which seems to be a bit darker and the boss-man is kind of a jerk, but even so – everyone’s real eager to help and explain what’s going on, and they’re all unusually supportive and friendly, and I guess that just seems odd. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess I figured people would be a little edgier and suspicious? Not that past id games have featured much in the way of NPCs before.

Anyway. I’m hoping to wrap that up this week. My rental copy of Forza 4 should be arriving soon, although I may just end up sending it back; the reviews all seem to say that it’s the best one in the franchise, but perhaps a little too similar to Forza 3, which I must admit I’m a little burned out on. Next week is Batman and from there on out it’s non-stop madness.